South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds has dismissed calls for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be trusted to fulfill such an agreement.

“As much as I want to believe we can negotiate with a tyrant, I suspect we can fool ourselves,” Rounds said, referring to Putin, at the Halifax Security Forum on Friday.

“Do you think this tyrant, if you offer him a piece of a free country, do you think he will stop?” Rounds said.

“I wish I could say there’s an easy way out, there isn’t.”

The RepublicanThe sentiment contrasts with President-elect Trump, who has previously claimed he could end the conflict in a day.

Rounds also lamented the restrictions placed on Kyiv in its response to Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“I just feel so frustrated that we haven’t been able to provide them with all the equipment that they need, and all the weapons systems that they need, to respond to the absolute tyranny coming out of Russia,” said Rounds, who reportedly emphasized that his views were not those of the incoming administration.

“I wonder why we haven’t done faster than we have.”

When contacted for comment, Trump’s transition team Newsweek to the following statement from Communications Director Steven Cheung: “As President Trump has said on the campaign trail, he is the only person who can bring both sides together to negotiate peace and work to end the war and stop the killing.”

Round’s comments came in the middle escalating Russian attacks on Ukraine this week.

On Thursday, Moscow carried out a hypersonic missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, targeting a military facility.

The strike involved the experimental Oreshnik hypersonic missile, a medium-range weapon reportedly adaptable to both nuclear and conventional warheads.

In a televised speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack was in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of US and British long-range missiles, which allow strikes against targets inside Russia.

“No one in the world has such weapons,” he said.

President Joe Biden greenlit the use of US-supplied army tactical missile systems (ATACMS) for strikes on Russian territory in a marked change in policy announced last weekend.

Kiev had long championed such a move, which was justified by Biden as a response to the involvement of North Korean troops in the war.

“ATACMS will significantly improve Ukraine’s ability to disrupt Russian operations deep behind the front lines,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defense minister, told. Financial Times. “These missiles allow us to engage high-value targets that other systems cannot.”

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Update, 11/23/24, 11:37 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a response from Trump’s transition team.